Miss A Thing
by benodite
Summary: While doing his duty, Max Tennyson missed his grandson's progression from a bright eyed teen to the young man who didn't want to lose any more family. ( Inspiration: Gravity Can't Bring You Back by Chyme )


Max Tennyson was many things to many different people all across the galaxy. An enemy, a protector of the peace, a Judas of Iscariot, a martyr, a thrill junkie, a bizarre but well meaning Grandfather. An absent Father.

The years spent with Area 51 and later with the Plumbers were infinitely rewarding. Protecting Earth and conducting high stakes missions to secure the universe saved him from the woes of a nine to five in a tiny cubicle where no one knew his name. Risking his life, living fast and edging ever quicker to death, in exchange for adventure and saving the cosmos from the alien overlord of the week seemed more than worth it when he was first propositioned.

Unfortunately no one had bothered to inform a younger him about the bitch that was equivalent exchange.

Maybe if Verdona had stayed and never left that first time, maybe then he would have known. There truly was no way to say if that would have had any effect on his bullheadedness. For all he knew, it would have meant that maybe...just maybe Verdona would have fallen out of love with him sooner, would have never had their children. Would never have had the cosmos within her eyes when she looked at him and her children late at night.

For every exhilarating memory with Area 51 or the Plumbers he had at least several regrets. Missed out on too many crucial moments of a man's life. He would sleep for however long he could, content in the land of dreams where you didn't have to face reality.

He was nineteen, hadn't been home in over a year, and he'd sat at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. His Mother's spot at the table was empty and the food set out before them didn't seem to have the same heart in it as every year of his life prior had.

His first wakeup call was when his sister broke down sobbing into her hands, shoulders trembling like leaves in a storm. He didn't go to the next several Thanksgivings.

He was guilty of being the type to hit snooze more than once in the morning.

He threw himself into his line of work, saw the stars, fought in close proximity to many of those stars. His line of work only became more and more dangerous as the years went on. Area 51 became known for holding secrets that people were afraid to ask. It was an indisputable fact in America: Area 51 had secrets you didn't want to know the answers to.

The Plumbers however seemed more mundane on a surface level. They hid in plain sight and no one knew of them as anything other than people that would fix your pipes. At least on Earth.

Verdona returned one fateful autumn evening, the same vibrant colors of life she had always been. Without a shred of grace Max dropped his seventh cup of coffee that day on the worn out linoleum of the government issued trailer he called home. It shattered into itty bitty pieces, in the back of his mind he's grateful that he'd let it go cold while lost in thought, brown soaked into his sock clad feet.

She didn't say anything, simply floated to him with a knowing quirk of her lips.

"Let's get you out of here, mister. How's a game of tag sound?" _I missed you._ Her voice resonates in a way no being of flesh could hope to replicate.

Ten years was a long time.

"Yeah...Yeah, okay. You're on, Verdona." he chased her around the small trailer and outside into the woody area far behind his current place of residence. Small stones and acorns dig into his unprotected feet.

She laughed and laughed as he scrambled on along behind her. She floated several inches above the ground and even when he looked for her he couldn't find her. He had to rely on intuition alone for the majority of their game. Panic surged through him every time he caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye and the leaves where he was sure she had been hadn't so much as rustled. He tried to follow the feeling of her and calm his racing heart.

Chasing after her blindly was a more frank way of putting it though, and he could admit as much if pressed.

She was always two steps ahead of him, free from the constraints of gravity and running across jagged rocks and brittle twigs.

The sun had long set by the time their game came to a close, the stars above twinkling like city lights.

She pressed a kiss to his mouth even though he had lost, eyes sparkling.

Verdona had felt strange after the first time they had laid down and known one another and had stayed in her human skin for a full twenty four hours before she had screamed as though she were being torn apart atom by atom.

Of course she knew she was pregnant before any test could ever detect such a thing. Anodites never had a need to...check. At least not naturally.

She screamed and screamed cursing all beings bound by flesh and beating the Earth with her hands. It was too cold for a human woman of her stature to be outside in hysterics, naked from head to toe. Verdona was no human woman. But she would have to be if she decided to carry their child.

He went out with her, sat on the ground in his night clothes, staring at the night sky as she sputtered every curse word she'd ever learned. Some in Earthly languages and others in a tongue not of humanity.

She tore at her skin with blunt nails, red welts along her thighs, her arms, her chest. Though a mark never marred her midsection.

The baby...babies(?) within her were little more the very beginnings of life.

Nothing more than a fertilized egg.

Several months later he came home to Verdona in garden of the small but respectable home he'd bought with his paycheck from a job that by government standards did not exist. There was dirt under her fingernails and twigs in her hair. The tree in the back of their yard missing a limb.

"Verdona," he began. Though he knew she was fine, that their children, twins, were okay he was prepared to scold her- as if he were the responsible one. Sometimes she forgot her body had weight. She had to focus at all times if she wanted to _float_. Bound by gravity she looked broken.

"I can see it...I don't think...either of them are like me." Her voice was so small, Max felt his heart splinter.

Anodites were natural adventurers, cosmonauts by birth. But they always returned home.

He silently cleared his throat.

"Does that mean you can see if our ozone layer's really getting depleted? Is Global Warming really real, Verdona? What next? Asbestos is gonna be the next thing confirmed, huh?" He rested a hand on her shoulder. Tried to not think that the look of absolute agony on her human face was more alien than glowing prehensile mana hair. "We should get some food in you before the world ends in man's hubris."

He held the paper bag of chilli fries and the plastic cup full of strawberry smoothie up to her. He couldn't understand what the craze that swept the nation had been about, but he hoped nothing more that their children wouldn't share the same unnerving obsession with the beverage.

She looked over her shoulder at him, black eyes soft.

"You're funny."

She gave birth to two beautiful boys and slowly they began to drift. When the boys went off to school she was never home, and neither was he. Plumber business was demanding.

Lying to his family was agony.

The hardest wakeup call was when his son Frank made the National Honors society in eleventh grade and he missed the banquet and Verdona _didn't._

He came home two days later to the certificate pinned to the fridge with the magnet the boys had made for them in elementary school. The family picture of them in it glared at him.

The dinner table was tense and silent that evening. He left the following morning after kissing both of his sons' foreheads. Max whispered he was sorry and that he loved them very much. Frank made him so proud. Both of his sons were going places. They slept on and he crept back downstairs. Verdona waited there for him. Vibrant red hair not graying as his was.

"When will you be back home next?"

He hung his head.

"Verdona, my lifestyle is dangerous-"

"I wasn't aware they made you sign a waiver to fix people's toilets."

"It would be easier if they- if you hated me." Verdona pursed her lips.

"Since when have you been fond of doing things the easy way?" Max felt shame fill him at his very core.

"When it comes to you and the boys, if it's safer I don't care what I have to do. How I have to do it."

She looked up at him with dark coal eyes.

"You're funny."

Frank got a scholarship in criminal justice. Carl seemed to have his life figured out and neither needed him anymore. Had they ever?

Verdona left him after their graduation. It was spring and the field of flowers they stood in the center of were what he thought were lillies.

She shed her human skin and stood in all her glory. Hair swishing back and forth like a calculating cat's tail.

Her large eyes stared up at him as she floated into his personal space.

"We had many good years. I need to reconnect with myself." To this day when he closed his eyes he could still imagine Verdona dancing barefoot and pregnant with him to the Shag Carpeting. "I'm sorry I could never give you the moon like I wanted to." She wound around him and they lifted off of the ground, floating. His cheek pressed against her hair.

She smiled at him, head tilting to the side like a child's.

"This isn't goodbye-" she began.

" _See you again_ seems like a better fit." she nodded.

"Yes, yes! Max we were always too similar." he agreed though it broke his heart. He couldn't expect her to stay, had known she would eventually leave and that their relationship merely existed on borrowed time. If he couldn't stay, why should she?

"That's why I always came back." she left shortly after, vibrant white purple blue and black against the sky. Her body lost all human shape and if he were a man who had seen less, he would be horrified and left wondering just what she was.

They never did marry. Verdona had always called him a daring man, but he could never gather up the strength to tell her she was the moon. He had the briefest of romances with another alien named Xylene.

It wasn't love with her, and so he declined go with her.

He regretted not getting those Asbestos seat covers for his shiny new RV. It was easy to operate a "blooming plumbers business" while living on the road for the most part. It was even easier after Carl and Frank left for their own lives.

Verdona returned only once. The birth of twins, her first grand children.

"Seven is a good number. So is two." she had said. There was disappointment on her face as she looked down at the two babies. "But, I don't think they take after my side much, now do they, Max? They're lacking a spark to them. Or maybe it's just too faint."

He purposefully ignored the thinly veiled jab.

"You never know." he told her, laughing at her expression. Human hospitals meant human skin and even after all the years of a second separation, her expressions were exaggerated and foreign to her. "Maybe one or even both will be anodites and you'll want grandparent to grandchildren bonding time. I was here first, I won't go down without a fight." she down right cackled.

She wore an ugly Christmas sweater, though it was December, it was far from Christmas.

"Maybe Ben will take after me, too."

"Good one, Max!"

He'd retired at the news of grandchildren and looked forward to a second chance.

Helping Ben learn how to ride his bike with and without training wheels, the first Sumo Slammers action figure he'd gotten him for his eighth birthday on a whim, and giving Ben money from the tooth fairy.

Reading books to Gwen late at night and teaching her how to read the words back to him, giving her her first haircut (fixing it up after Nathalie had taken a bowl and scissors to the poor child's head), and playing barbie goes to law school with her.

Those were moments he wouldn't trade for anything.

Things were tense with his sons and the rest of his family but, he persevered for his grandchildren. The son they had adopted from Nathalie's side of the family was sweet enough, though he wanted little to do with Max as he was by all standards a complete stranger.

The road trip that eventful summer was filled with many close calls, though for once he did something right. He united the pair of "cousins" and he finally went to family gatherings with confidence. No longer the old man that would pop his head in for ten minutes and get mobbed by his two grandchildren.

Of course he ended up messing that up. Retirement had been nice but he couldn't ignore the fact that the Plumbers needed to be reformed. There were new threats and when he went deep into the rabbit hole he messed up big time.

Lost the trust of the two most important people in his life that the time. His whole world. Who knew that faking your death for the safety of mankind could nearly shatter all bonds into a broken mirror of distrust.

Though both forgave him, all that mattered was that the world was safe. That they were alive and had each other.

Gwen revealed to him that she was an anodite just like her grandmother (and for a moment he wished he had bet money with Verdona on that one) she had plans for college and a boyfriend. Kevin Levin. If Ben could forgive the misguided teen then so could he, he did after all make his granddaughter the happiest girl around.

He hoped they'd have a happy life together. That Kevin had the guts he didn't.

Gwen was fine but Ben had been more closed off after the would be invasion. He'd always been the type to act first then deal with things later. It wasn't healthy but Max understood. Understood on a level what it was like to have multiple people rely on you to save them. Though he knew he could never comprehend the weight on Ben's young shoulders.

He told him about the many adventures they had.

About an alien stuck in a clone of his body, all inverted colors, that wasn't that bad.

Told him about the Plumber's kids.

Ranted and raved about how his childhood bullies had to be saved from themselves and misused alien tech.

He even joked that he stopped an alien invasion by having an enemy alien prince fall madly in love with him and his Tennyson Charms™.

Though he always avoided one thing. Max wasn't sure what it was really, couldn't hope to guess what it was for the longest time.

Sometimes Ben would hold his stomach or get misty eyed at the sight of moths. He'd sit inside the Rust Bucket with Max for hours on end without saying a single word. Avoided pickles like the plague, actually getting sick to his stomach when Max ate a pickle in front of him once.

On one of those days, on one of his worse days in which he walked into the Rust Bucket without a word and unceremoniously flopped face first into the booth seating of the old RV, Max decided to act.

He took Ben's new car without even the slightest protest (or acknowledgement for the matter) and run down to the Mr. Smoothy's, picked up an order of chilli fries as well. The pink drink glared up at him as he drove back to his "house". You couldn't always get what you wanted.

"Ben?" he called from above Ben's prone form. Ben let out a delayed groan. "Ben you need to eat." Ben shook his head, face burrowing deeper into the seats. He looked ridiculous, legs and arm hanging over the side of the old seats.

"'M not hungry, Grandpa." Max chuckled, purposefully crinkling the paper bag.

"I'll just enjoy this Mr. Smoothy's and Chilli fries dinner all by my lonesome, then." that got a twitch out of him. Ben remained still for a moment longer, before he sat up. There were deep bags under his green eyes.

"I changed my mind." he positively devoured the food set before him while Max squeezed into the seat opposite to him.

"Ben, there's something on your mind, son. You can tell me anything...especially if you're losing sleep over it."

Ben worried his straw between his teeth, eyebrows furrowed. He relaxed slightly after a moment's deliberation.

"Something happened with the Watch after I put it back on." he sucked down a bit of smoothie and Max was absolutely on the edge of his mental seat.

"And?"

"You won't think it's weird if I tell you, right? You won't think less of me?"

"Ben if this is about you lending my old suit to Kevin and letting it get ruined, then of course not. If it's about anything else the answer stays the same." Ben sighed, pushing the half empty container away from him, eyes glued to the table.

"You became a great grandparent while you were playing Obi-wan." Max blinked at him, baffled.

"Your cousin and Kevin were like that? How does that relate to the Omnitrix and you?" that brought the next question: what happened to his supposed great grandchildren?

Ben drew even more into himself, index finger tracing patterns into the tabletop.

"Actually, they were mine." _Oh._

"Elaborate?" Ben bit the inside of his cheek hard enough that Max _felt_ it.

"Not much to elaborate on. It was reproduction season for Big Chill, for Necrofriggians and-"

"Wait, wait. Ben did you have…?" Ben's cheeks turned a red just a shade darker than Gwen's hair.

"What? No! They reproduce asexually every eighty years. Anyways, the Watch made me hormonal and have a pretty spotty memory. I don't remember most of it… but I was eating metal and fire. The Watch forced me to transform a few times and anytime I transformed into a different alien I'd change to Big Chill." Ben took a deep breath, face still red.

"I- Big Chill, gave birth to some little alien babies. They were slightly bigger than human babies with big heads, antennae, but they barely weighed anything."

Max thought for a moment, watched as his grandson appeared to be on the verge of tears.

"Where are they now?"

"They're in deep...deep space. They need solar plasma to eat and a cool place to live. They're supposed to be there, but I-" Ben choked on a sob.

"Miss them." Max finished for him. Ben nodded unable to find his words for a few moments.

"There was this- there was the runt of the fourteen of them. Wings like paper and the softest face I've ever seen. It had trouble flying and I told it "go on, fly". It let out this little noise at me and that's the only thing I can clearly remember from that time. Sending my- Big Chill's baby off with the rest to space."

Max leaned over the table to rest a hand on Ben's shoulder. Ben looked up at him with teary eyes.

"Ben, how could I be upset at the wonderful news? When they're older we'll go to see them. We can find them, I know we can. Maybe wait a year or two?" Ben looked pained.

"Grandpa, with the DNAliens and the Highbreed, I don't even know if they're alright." Grandpa Max leveled him a determined look.

"Ben, they're your children. They're Tennysons. I know they're just dying to meet you again. They'll be fine until it's safe to get them. From what you've said they're used to going off into deep space to survive. They'll wait for you. You can't break the bond between you completely. I'm so glad you told me." Ben smiled a watery smile, soft green eyes perking up like a drooping flower given water.

"You know, you can always talk to Verdona about these things. Gwen told me you met her while I was… She's experienced in this thing. Being stuck in a body that isn't fully yours and having children that aren't the same species as you." he hadn't spoken to Verdona since their grandkids were born. But he would talk to her with Ben if he needed to. He was going to be there for his grandkids if it killed him.

"You know, she visited you when she thought you were, you know, she visited your secret fishing hole." Ben's face tinged pink once more and Max couldn't hold back a chuckle.

"Who knew my grandson was such a romantic?" Ben laughed with him, a small weight off of his small shoulders.

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes as Ben finished his smoothie.

"Is there anything else you want to tell me, son?" Ben quirked a brow at him. The same challenging look as his grandmother.

"I haven't really told anyone but my ex girlfriend, but, I like boys. Maybe even alien boys." Max laughed harder than he could remember laughing in a long time.

"I guess you take more after me, after all!"

Ben was silent for a beat before making a face.

"You're funny."

His grandchildren would always be the best part of his life, his redemption.

He learned a funny thing about equivalent exchange: even though it was a bitch, the misery and missed opportunities were eventually balanced out by the utter joy of living to see his grandchildren grow up and being able to be present in their lives.


End file.
